James Breig retired in 2008 after 37 years at The Evangelist, newspaper of the Diocese of Albany, N.Y., where he had been a staff writer, assistant editor and then editor (for the last 25 years of his tenure). But retirement meant he had time for a new project — researching and writing what turned out to be a 332-page nonfiction book. The book idea was sparked by his discovery of a soldier’s letters in an antique shop three years ago. That find resulted in “Searching for Sgt. Bailey: Saluting an Ordinary Soldier of World War II.”

“Dearest Mama,” begins a letter written by Army Sgt. James Boisseau Bailey on Aug. 8, 1944. “I know that you have begun to think that I have forgotten you but that will never happen. … Will do anything to get this damn war over and to get back home.”

Bailey sent that letter from New Guinea to his mother in Virginia, according to Breig. It and others like it inspired Breig to “search between their lines for telltale clues to the soldier’s entire life and for hidden hints about his fears and his worries, his hopes — and his love for a mysterious woman named Jane.”

Breig’s books also introduces many other ordinary men and women who, as he puts it, “went off to war, dutifully did what they were asked to do and returned to anonymity.” He drew on hundreds of letters home from Marines, sailors, WACs and soldiers, and he conducted interviews with WWII veterans and experts on the history of the war.

He notes that “heroes of the ‘Greatest Generation’ have been rightly honored for their exploits on Normandy’s beaches, along Iwo Jima’s sands and in the air above Germany,” but he wanted to focus on the “other kinds of heroes,” he said, “the unnoticed millions who deserve to be saluted because they did their duty, regardless of what it was, well and faithfully.”

“If the stories are allowed to fade,” writes Breig, “so, too, will the men and women who lived them. So, too, will the history they made.”

The book covers what life was like in an Army training camp as well as New Guinea’s significance “in the string of fierce battles to reclaim the Pacific”; the creation of V-mail; the role of quartermasters, engineers and mechanics; and the demobilization of troops at the end of the war.

Since the book was published in November, Breig has been busy. He told CNS he has had a chance to promote the book on national radio, via “The Jim Bohannon Show.” He’s talked about it on at least 15 radio stations in local markets around the country, has made some TV appearances and been the subject of newspaper articles in the Albany area and in Virginia, Bailey’s home state. He said he’s also given at least 20 presentations “to libraries, senior clubs and fraternal organizations.”

One Response to Letters in antique shop lead retired editor to write tribute to ‘ordinary soldier’

Last week I attended mass with my wife and two of my sons, and though I heard prayers said for the Church, the victims in Haiti, priests locally and who knows where else, and for many other people or things, I did not hear any prayer for our soldiers. As always, it saddened and angered me. It seems they either don’t understand or value that we are in a WAR, that military sons, daughters, fathers and/or mothers are making extraordinary sacrifices so that the rest of us can live free and in peace while enjoying the company of our families and loved ones.

It is not only the sound of battle and its sometime terrible personal consequences that makes them special, it is also the every day things the rest of us take for granted, the wedding they must postpone, the schooling cut short by orders calling them back to service, the present business opportunity that won’t be available when their call back service ends, the birthdays and births they miss, the long separations from wives and children, and yes, the dissolution of marriages this sometimes brings about,

Please, from time to time during the week, and always when you go to the house of worship of your choice, say a few words on their behalf, and ask your priest to remember them during mass. Thank them and their families whenever you can, they really deserve it.